Swift Wind's Adventure Across the Eighth Dimention
by TSCA
Summary: What happened to Swift Wind when Catra opened the portal? Was he not present because of a writing oversight, or because he was drawn into his own adventure? I choose the impossible! I choose adventure! I choose to tell the story of Swift Wind's journey across space and time! Sidestory to Interlopers


The horse wandered about in an apple orchard, happily munching on the fruit that littered the ground. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the air was cool. There could be no better day. After all, what more could one want than a full belly and gentle weather?

A swift wind blew through the orchard and shook even more apples free. As the horse bent down for them, he paused. There was something about the wind, something familiar. He closed his eyes and remembered the sensation of soaring through the air with his wings outstretched, a thousand feet above the ground.

But he was just a horse. He had no wings. He looked to the side and checked just to make sure. All he saw was the same brown coat he always had.

He looked at his fur more closely. Didn't it used to be white? White as the clouds, with beautiful rainbow plumage on the underside of his pink wings. And a horn! He had a horn too, didn't he?

He shook his head and butted it against an apple tree. There was no horn, nor wings, nor white coat. His breathing grew tense as the body he knew conflicted with the form he remembered.

When he opened his eyes, he was in a bright green meadow, with no apples in sight. His eyes darted around to find cover, but there was nothing around except the grass, not even hoof prints.

As he scanned the area to figure out how he had gotten there, he saw cracks of light appearing in the ground, slowly swallowing up the meadow. He backed up as the cracks grew wide and spread across the meadow.

It was time to run.

He broke into a frantic gallop, but the grass was endless and he made no progress to the distant horizon. The earth rumbled behind him and the ground disappeared beneath his hooves and he scrambled to find any purchase that would save him from being engulfed.

A pair of wings shot out from his side and lifted him into the air, away from the crumbling ground. He didn't question it, he just flapped as hard as he could to escape the void.

"Help, someone!" He shouted as even the sky started disappearing around him. "For the love of Etheria, someone help me!"

There was a pulse of light and a terrifying numbness spread through his legs and body. He closed his eyes and wept as he resigned himself to his fate. There would be no long, happy life spent eating apples, or even a glorious death in battle. He would just vanish ignominiously, without anyone around to even remember him.

"I gotcha!"

Something hit him hard in the side and carried him through the air, far outstripping the decaying reality behind them until the acceleration drove the air from his lungs. His vision swam as they went faster still, until all he could see were bright pulses of light flashing in the sky as he shot past them.

They came to an abrupt halt in a place of utter darkness, with no trace of the meadow or the bright void. As his vision recovered, he could make out several other armored equine forms surrounding him. One was an old grey unicorn whose horn was glowing with bright white light. Standing next to him was a dark blue battle-scarred pegasus and a roan horse whose coat glistened like crystal. They were all quite a bit smaller than he was; if he had to guess, they were a group of ponies.

The pegasus turned to the crystal pony. "Damn, Foxtrot. We owe you a byte."

The horse shook his head. "What?"

"Oh, it's a unit word for 8 bits." The unicorn chuckled he and the pegasus counted out eight gold coins from the various pouches that hung across their bodies. "My name is Valence, Archmage of the Celestial Order. My compatriots here are Captain Foxtrot of the Crystal Guard, and Commander Morning Star of the Lunar Patrol."

He looked at each of them in turn. They all worse the same dark metal armor, which covered much of their body and their faces. But from what he could see, they were more curious than hostile.

"And you… you saved me?"

Valence shook his head. "Oh no. I wish you no offense, but I estimated your chances of survival as roughly nil."

"You gotta understand," Morning Star said. "Dippin' into a reality maelstrom to perform an extra-dimensional extraction is goddamn impossible. Valence is going to have to go back to the Order and write a paper on how half a dozen laws of magic are wrong."

The horse looked around in puzzlement. "Then who did?"

"Don't look around," Foxtrot said. "Look up."

A bright pink pegasus almost as large as he was performed a barrel roll over them before she landed. She bowed her head at the newcomer, and he saw that she had a horn just like him.

"Heya! I'm Tabula Rasa! What's your name?"

"I'm… I'm…" The horse struggled to remember.

"Struck speechless, eh?" She nudged him in the ribs with her wing. "Come on, don't be shy!"

"No, it's not that," he sighed. "Everything comes and goes, and when I try to grab onto it, the memory slips away like water."

"That's too bad." Tabula Rasa gave him a sympathetic pat. "I hope you figure it out, Horsey!"

"Ok, no. I don't remember my name, but I do know that I hate being called 'Horsey'."

"Consider it extra incentive to remember your name, then," she winked. "Meanwhile, let's see if we can't figure out anything aboutcha."

She poked him in the sides with her horn. It zapped him with a bolt of green electricity and caused his hair to flare up. "Alright, this is definitely your body and not some temporary transformation or illusion. That means you're a bonafide alicorn!"

"Alicorn?"

"Yeah, you know, winged unicorn?" She pointed to his horn and wings. "There's a bunch of 'em where we come from, and they're all in charge of some fundamental aspect of the world. The Sun, the Moon, Love, Magic, etc. Do ya' do anything like that?"

"I don't think I've ever done magic in my life," Horsey said. "The most I can ever remember doing is flying."

"Ah, late bloomer then. Doncha worry, the Alicorn of Love was like that. Ascended from a pegasus if I remember my history classes correctly."

Foxtrot nodded. "Ya' got it."

Horsey looked Tabula up and down. "Then what do you do, Tabula?"

"Me?" She laughed and flipped her mane. "Oh, I don't do anything so grand. I'm not even a real… uh, well, that's complicated." She flapped her wings wildly. "Let me start over. I am special agent Tabula Rasa! I'm a sort of general purpose problem solver for cosmological disasters, and let me tell you, the fabric of reality unravelling is big trouble!"

"Is that why things kept changing? The world, my body, my memories?"

"Yup! Someone gave reality a giant wedgie, and it's trying to unwedge itself." She glanced over at Valence. "Ya' wanna give him the rundown, kid?"

Valence cleared his throat. "By analogy, let us consider a sheet of fabric. If you twist it, it will try to unwind and return to the configuration with the lowest amount of stress. But the fabric of reality has been so badly stressed at your world that it has begun to fray. The individual threads are still searching for their lowest energy configuration, but they won't reconnect as long as the source of the disturbance is still active. And if we do not address the issue, the tear will continue to propagate across the universe."

"Then how do we fix it?"

"Now that's the question, isn't it?" Valence mused. "Well, I suppose we'll find out when we get into the exclusion zone."

"Get where? How?" Horsey looked around again. Now that his eyes had more time to adjust to the dim light, he could see that the darkness around him was actually filled with innumerable pinpricks of light. "Are those… stars? Real stars? Are we in space?"

Foxtrot nodded. "Ya' catch on quick, but we ain't in space per-se. If it was, we'd all be gasping for air as our body fluids boiled off into the vacuum, leaving us dessicated and withered husks."

"Less talk of gruesome deaths, Foxtrot," Tabula Rasa groaned. "Don't think too much about it, Horsey. We're actually traveling in a metaphysical plane beyond the physical world. We were just about to enter the exclusion zone when Valence detected ya' and opened up a rescue portal."

"Can I come with you? I don't know what to do on my own, and I owe you guys for getting me out of there."

"The more the merrier!" Tabula Rasa said cheerfully. "You're going to go on an extremely dangerous adventure with us, but you'll be fine as long as you obey the fundamental rule of intergalactic cosmological travel: Don't Panic!"

* * *

Valence swept his light beam across the space in front of them to reveal a sparkling carpet of stars that wound its way through space like a snake. It stretched on seemingly forever and stayed the same thickness throughout, just wide enough for two to walk abreast. Valene took point and gestured for the others to follow him.

"Alright Horsey," he said. "Keep to the path. The further you get from it, the more likely you will get caught in some space-time anomaly or worse."

Horsey tested it out cautiously. "But what is it?"

"It is a metaphysical representation of the most stable route through the exclusion zone."

"Metaphysical? Seems plenty physical to me."

"That's just the thing," Foxtrot said from behind him. "It ain't nothin' but how your mind sees it."

"Isn't, uh, everything dependent on how your mind understands things?"

Morning Star slapped Horsey's side with his tail. "Alright, now you're getting it. Lots of people don't understand that reality is our subjective perception of objective existence."

"If it bothers ya', try not to think too much about it!" Tabula Rasa chuckled. "It's a good way to get existential nightmares. I once spent a week trying to figure out if I was really a brain in a jar in some mad scientist's lab."

"I did not consider the possibility." Horsey thought about it for a moment. "I have now considered the possibility, and it is terrifying."

"Oh, it's not so bad!" Tabula Rasa said. "Even if ya' were a brain in a jar, there's no reason not to enjoy what ya' got. Well, that's my take at least."

Horsey remained quiet for a long while as they wound their way through space. The silence gave him time to reflect: he still couldn't remember much except for vague impressions, but he knew that he was supposed to help someone, even if he couldn't remember who she was.

She…

She was a young female of her species, barely an adult, with dark blonde hair. And, at the same time, she was ancient, a towering warrior-princess whose hair glowed a vibrant gold.

He shook his head. "No, no, that can't be right."

"Hey, keep it together!" Morning Star steadied him with his body. "Are you feelin' alright?"

Horsey panted heavily as he leaned on Morning Star. "I remembered my friend! I'm supposed to help her. She… She…"

Green magic surrounded his body as Tabula Rasa put him in a telekinetic hold. "Alright, doncha panic! That's a good sign, it means you're recovering. Just focus on your breathing, alright?"

"In and out, in and out," Morning Star said.

"In and out," Horsey repeated. "In and out."

He took in several deep breaths and stood on shaky legs. "I'm calm. Thanks."

Tabula Rasa and Morning Star exchanged places as they started traveling once again. "So who's your friend?"

"I don't know. She seems so strange." He closed his eyes and tried to replay the image. "She stood on two legs, and had digits instead of hooves. What does that mean?"

Tabula Rasa made a thoughtful noise. "You know, she sounds like a human."

"Human?"

"Yeah, they're a race of bipeds descended from apes or monkeys or something like that. Hold on, lemme show ya'."

Tabula Rasa's horn lit up as she was wreathed in green flames. Her body burned away in the fire and was replaced by a tall, lithe body that was a dead ringer for the species Horsey remembered.

"Ta-da! Human form! I've been getting a lot of mileage out of this baby since I got access privileges to a human world."

"That's it," Horsey nodded. "And you said you've been to her world?"

"What? No." Tabula Rasa waved one of her upper limbs casually. "There's a bunch of humans all over the galaxy. We just got a portal to one specific human world. And it's really more of an alternate reality world to our own with a human analog to every sentient creature. Crazy, huh?"

She dismissed her form and returned to normal. "Well, anyways, let me know if ya' remember anything else about your world!"

Horsey nodded. "I think talking about it helps. At least, it keeps the memories in my head better." He bit his lip thoughtfully. "Hey, maybe you could tell me about your home?"

Tabula Rasa's eyes lit up. "Oh wow! Where do I begin?" She took in a comically deep breath. "Ok! So I'm from this planet called Equus, which is home to a bajillion ungulates of all kinds! I was commissioned as a special agent for the Equestrian Federation! They've got cloud cities, magic castles, dragon caves, vast and unexplored wilderness, and tons of adventure every day!"

She paused and considered that last statement. "Or at least there is if ya' look for it. Most people just enjoy life, you know?"

"That sounds like my kind of place," Horsey said. "It must be great to be free instead of serving as a beast of burden."

Tabula Rasa stopped dead in her tracks. "You were enslaved?"

"I…" His old life flashed before his eyes. "I pulled carts. Yes, I pulled carts for a farmer. But that was before I became an alicorn and had complex thoughts."

"Hm." Tabula Rasa poked him in the side with her horn again. "So you ascended? What did ya' do?"

"I didn't do anything. I think…" Horsey closed his eyes. He saw a patch of grass and the human girl again. She was swinging a sword in frustration and shouting phrases until a beam of light struck him. "My friend! She transformed me with a magic sword!"

"That sounds like a great friend."

"She was." Horsey frowned and mouthed the words again."She wa?"

"Hey, don't give up hope! Reality isn't destroyed yet and we might still be able to save your friend!"

"I hope so." Horsey sighed.

He looked at the space surrounding them to try and take his mind off things. It was beautiful in its own way: the stars came in so many interesting sizes and formed wonderfully complex patterns around them.

"You just look like you've never seen stars before." Tabula Rasa said.

"You know, I'm fairly sure I haven't. What are they?"

"Do ya' want the long answer or the short answer?"

"I don't mind hearing you talk." Horsey blushed. "I mean, uh… long answer."

"Ok then!" She cast an illusion spell and a tiny pinprick of light appeared. "So, let's start at the very beginning – a very good place to start! First, there was nothing. No, not even nothing – non-existence is tricky like that. Then, the moment of creation!" The pinprick of light exploded and Horsey was surrounded by glowing clumps of energy. "The fabric of space-time and all the building blocks of matter came into existence in an event I like to call the Horrendous Space Kablooie!"

"That's not it's name," Valence groaned from the front.

"Then come up with a less dirty name for it, kid!" She yelled back. "Anyways, the cosmos was filled with building blocks that coalesced to form the first element: Hydrogen!"

"Um… hydrogen isn't an element? There's earth, wind, water and fire."

Tabula Rasa flicked her tail in annoyance. "An element is the most basic form of matter that retains a distinct chemical identity. Please save any further questions for after the lecture." She cleared her throat. "Anyways, the hot dense early universe formed helium, along with trace amounts of lithium and beryllium shortly after, then cooled down too much for any further nucleosynthesis."

The clouds started to swirl and condense into glowing spheres. "So then you get the first stars formed from gas clouds that collapsed under the force of gravity, and the fusion of helium and hydrogen lead to the creation of all other natural elements over the course of a few hundred million years. You've heard of iron, gold, silver, platinum and all?"

He nodded. "Alright, now you're talking sense. So it's all star stuff? Then how did it get into our world from the stars?"

One of the stars in front of his face exploded violently in response. "Stars have a finite lifespan and can end in an explosion if they're large enough. We're going to have to skip over the details, but the result is that the galaxy gets seeded with the fusion products. So then you get another gas cloud, but this one can form planets in addition to stars because there's all this new matter now!"

A small solar system formed out of the gas cloud, with eight planets orbiting a central star. "And these second generation stars are the first ones that can support life, which in some small number of cases, evolves into intelligent technological life!"

A rocket shot out of the third planet from the sun and landed on its moon. Then more followed; some travelled back and forth between the two while others used the moon as a staging area for trips to the other planets and eventually left the solar system altogether.

"This is, incidentally, the human home system," Tabula Rasa said. "They were one of the first lifeforms to spread out and colonize the universe!"

"First ones?" Horsey repeated it a few times. "Sounds… familiar."

"Oh, a lot of places have legends about powerful precursors. There's even an archeological order in Equestria which believes humans were the original settlers! I've never been sold, but it would explain why so many planets have, horses, unicorns, and pegasi, or at least legends about them."

Morning Star laughed. "I prefer the version where the pegasi are god-born creatures who were sent into the mortal realm on a divine mission to help guide mortals and ascended to the heavens as a reward."

Foxtrot rolled his eyes. "Well of course ya' would."

"First ones," Horsey said again. "Are humans first ones?"

"Possibly? I suppose that depends on your definition of human," Tabula Rasa shrugged. "There's a lot of variety in the species, you know. Some of them embraced advanced genetic engineering while others chose technological augmentation. Most of them seemed content to stick with their base forms and only adopt a few tweaks here and there to make up for nature's deficiencies."

Horsey looked at his body. "I was transformed…"

"Is there something wrong?"

"I don't know. I like being able to make complex thoughts, but I'd also have appreciated being asked about it beforehand," Horsey muttered. "You know, it's exactly what she had to go through. She was chosen, never consulted."

"Your friend?"

"Yes! Yes, I remember now!" he cried. "They chose her, then they told her she had to let go of her friends and stay with them in order to become a warrior in their image."

"Intriguing!" Tabula Rasa said. "What else can ya' tell me about your precursors?"

Horsey shook his head. "Not much."

Tabula gave him a sympathetic pat on the back with her wing. "Well, let's keep going for now. Perhaps you'll remember more later."

The stellar path wound in a downwards spiral for what seemed like an eternity. Horsey had long since lost count of the steps he had taken; all he knew was this his body needed rest badly. His companions were no better for the wear, having traveled longer and further than he had.

"Guys, we need to take a breather," Horsey panted. "I'm about to drop dead."

Foxtrot shoved him from behind. "Buck up and push on. Remember, it's all in your head."

Morning Star rolled his eyes. "Aw, give him a break. You know time works differently here."

"It would let me take a more accurate telemetry survey," Valence mused. "What do you say, Tabula?"

"I wanna turn into a balloon and never walk again."

"Alright, you heard the boss," Morning Star chuckled. "Form camp."

The ponies busied themselves unpacking on the path and soon set up a campfire with a pot of stew simmering in the middle. Morning Star and Foxtrot attended to the food, while Valence went off by himself to take readings. Horsey stood around awkwardly, unsure of what he could do to help.

"Two bits for ya' thoughts!" Tabula sat down next to him and rolled onto her back. "Anything to take my mind off of my hooves."

Horsey stretched out next to her. "This has been an incredibly strange day."

"Yup! I find the best way to deal with it is to focus on the goal and not think too much about the weirdness."

"How long have you been doing this sort of thing for?"

"Oh, I dunno. It's really tricky for me since I spend a lot of time on other worlds, in different times, or traveling through the planes. And we obviously use different calendars and have different lifespans. But it's been a long, long time by even our count."

"Equestrians?"

"Something like that."

"Chow time!" Foxtrot slid a bowl of vegetable stew over to them. "My famous hearty vegetable stew. Fit for the Alicorns, if I do say so myself."

Horsey looked puzzled. "Um… shouldn't we have two, then?"

"Aww, doncha worry about it," Tabula Rasa chuckled. "I can take care of myself."

The stew was hearty and filling, but Horsey took little comfort in it. He couldn't shake the thought that there was something terribly strange about Tabula Rasa. Not in the sense that she was evil or scheming, but she was definitely keeping something from him.

Horsey returned the bowl to Foxtrot and made sure that Tabula Rasa was soundly napping before he whispered. "Hey guys, uh, I have a question just between us."

Foxtrot smirked. "Yeah, she's available."

Morning Star promptly broke down into a fit of giggles while Horsey stomped his hooves in annoyance. "No! Not that!"

He waited for the burning in his cheeks to subside before he continued. "Look, what exactly is Tabula Rasa?"

Foxtrot shrugged. "She's got wings and a horn. That makes her an alicorn, don't it?"

"Does it?" Horsey stretched out his wings. "I've got them too, but I can't do any magic, much less move celestial bodies."

"Uh, buddy, don't take this the wrong way, but that's just you."

"That's true," Horsey said. "So she's just like any of the alicorns from Equestria, right?"

They nodded in unison. "Exactly."

"So do Alicorns not eat?"

Morning Star and Foxtrot quickly exchanged glances.

"No, not at all," Morning Star answered quickly.

"That's funny." Horsey looked squarely at Foxtrot. "I could swear you said the stew was fit for the alicorns."

Foxtrot flashed him a sparkling grin. "Slip of the tongue. I meant to use the singular."

"Except that you just said that you don't consider me an alicorn." Horsey moves closer until they were staring eye to eye. "Ergo, when you said the stew was fit for the alicorns, you weren't talking about me or Tabula Rasa. In fact, I think you were talking about those Alicorns Tabula Rasa told me about, which implies that they eat. Which makes Tabula Rasa not eating a little odd."

Morning Star pushed the two of them apart. "Perhaps she just wasn't hungry?"

"And how would either of you know that without asking?"

Foxtrot banged his forehead against the stew pot. "Ok! Fine, ya' got me! What do ya' want to know?"

"I want to know if I can trust you, because I don't even know what's real anymore!" Horsey shouted.

Morning Star quickly put a wing over his mouth. "Do you want to wake her?" he hissed. "Calm down, we're not your enemy. You just caught us off guard, ok?"

"Fine, fine," Horsey whispered. "So spill the oats already."

"Can't." Foxtrot said flatly. "Look, pal, I don't want to keep ya' out of the loop, but it ain't our story to tell. It's need to know and ya' don't need to know."

"Alright, I can respect that," Horsey nodded. "Can you promise it won't be an issue?"

Foxtrot held out a hoof. "Promise? I can guarantee it."

Horsey stared at it for a moment and then touched it with his own. "Alright. I'll take your word for it."

* * *

The stew had grown cold when Valence returned to camp with a frown on his face. He ignored the food they offered him and told them to stand guard as he woke Tabula Rasa up. It took a few shakes, but he eventually roused her and dragged her over to the campfire.

"Alright everyone," he said. "I do not wish to alarm you, but my readings indicate that we stopped making actual progress some time ago."

Tabula Rasa furrowed her brow. "Have we wandered into an anomaly?"

"Impossible," Valence said. "The path is the correct route. I would bet the last fifty years of my career on it."

Foxtrot stomped on the ground softly. "So how come we're stuck goin' in circles? Ya' want to run your matrices by me and see if ya' didn't mistranslate a vector somewhere?"

"The calculations are accurate," Valence snorted. "If I were to guess? I would say that we might be inside a phase spider's web."

"That would explain it," Tabula Rasa nodded. "How do you want to handle this? I say we try to cut the web and push on through."

"Awfully risky, don't you think? Destroying the web would alert the spider."

"Well it hasn't noticed us caught in the web yet. It's probably gone."

"I would prefer to adopt the more prudent approach and slowly disentangle ourselves from the web at this location, then find an alternate path to the center of the exclusion zone."

"Do we have the time for it?" Horsey asked.

Valence bristled. "Things should be done properly or not at all, especially for a delicate matter such as this."

Foxtrot shook his head. "Sorry Archmage, I'm with the boss on this one. If we ain't triggered it yet, it's not at home."

"Seconded," Morning Star said. "We've wasted enough time."

Valence shot Tabula Rasa an exasperated look. "Well alright. Let's make this fast and pray that nothing happens."

"On my mark," Tabula Rasa said. "One, two, three, mark!"

Twin strands of energy shot out of their horns; Tabula Rasa's was bright green, while Valence's was pure silver. They whipped around in the air and triggered an enormous distortion in the fabric of space-time. Horsey staggered sideways from the sensation of vertigo and collapsed onto the ground until the vibrations died down.

"What was that?"

"Just the web snapping," Tabula Rasa said. "See? Nothing to worry about."

Valence brought out his light again and cast it onto the path. The path looked different this time: it was not an endless spiral anymore but a straight path stretching on into the distance. As he swept his light across it, it came across a spider like creature as the size of a large dog scuttling towards them."

Horsey squinted. "Is that a phase spider? It doesn't look that dangerous."

"That there's a just baby," Foxtrot said. "Strange, they can't weave webs at that age. Too young for it."

Valence immediately fired a magical flare into the air from his horn. It burned light a sun above them and revealed an endless amount of phase spiders cluttering the path on both ends and slowly crawling towards them."

"Tabula," Valence said calmly, "The thought occurs to me that the phase spider who built this web may have been distracted by giving birth to several hundred ravenous children."

"Battle formation!" Tabula Rasa shouted, "Valence and Foxtrot take the rear, Morning Star is with me on the van!"

"What about me?" Horsey asked nervously.

She shot him a cocky grin before she charged up her horn. "Don't panic and don't die!"

Morning Star and Tabula Rasa leaped into the air and spread their wings simultaneously so that they could dive bombed into the front line. There was a blinding explosion as they hit the ground, which sent spiders flying off the path carved out a generous amount of free space in front of the rest of the group.

"Keep moving forward!" Foxtrot yelled as he stomped on a phase spider coming up from behind. "Valence, let's go! Sword and shield maneuver!"

Horsey backed away from the rear, but found himself transfixed by the fighting. Foxtrot switched stances from defense to offense and back again in a series of fluid motions as he savaged the spiders trying to swarm him, while Valence picked off the spiders further to the rear with a series of laser like blasts that drilled holes directly through their heads. The spiders quickly caught on and launched a series of hairy bristles at Valence, who responded by freezing them in the air and sending them back to their owners, shredding dozens of spiders in one motion

A shadow passed over his head and Horsey glanced up to see a dozens of spiders falling from above and surrounding him.

"They're on me!" He shouted as he jumped into the air to avoid their fangs.

Horsey twisted around in the air to avoid the hairs that they fired at him and landed close to the front. He reared up on his hind legs as they surged towards him and let the first spider have two solid blows, which sent it careening back and into the others. A second spider crawled over the corpse of the first and was promptly gored through its face by his horn. Horsey shook his head to the side to dislodge the creature and smacked a third spider off of the path.

A dozen barbs whistled through the air and embedded themselves in the muscles of his left hind leg. Horsey collapsed onto the ground and came face to face with the remaining spiders who rushed towards him with their mouths open. He shut his eyes as one pounced on him and hard a sickening crunch as it struck with its fangs.

Curiously, he felt no pain.

Horsey opened his eyes to see that the phase spider had sunk its fangs into a solid chitinous leg. Both he and the spiders fixed their eyes on the limb's owner to figure out what kind of creature it belonged to.

Although the form was equine, the creature standing over Horsey seemed more of an insect than anything else. It was covered in dark green plates of chitin instead of skin and dripping with ichor. It casually raised the leg with a spider stuck on it and bit into it with fangs of its own, ripping the spider apart in one swift motion. Cackling green energy surrounded the sharp curved horn on its head as it blasted the remaining spiders with magical lightening. Once the spiders had stopped moving, it stepped forward and breathed fire over their corpses until there was nothing left but ash.

"Help! Someone help!" Horsey shouted as he scrambled away from the creature.

Morning Star put a firm, hoof on Horsey's back. "Calm down, I've got you."

"I'm fine! Do something about that!" Horsey said, pointing at the creature.

Morning Star raised a wing and batted Horsey over the head with it. "Hey genius, remember that thing we talked about after dinner? This is that thing we talked about after dinner."

Horsey froze. "Uh… I meant to say… good save, Tabula?"

Tabula Rasa chuckled. "Horsey, this is far from the first time I've had to reveal my form. You're taking it really well all things considered. Tell ya' what, let's get ya' patched up first and I'll tell ya' all about it."

* * *

Horsey rested on the ground as Valence vanished the barbs in his leg and healed the wound with one sweep of his horn. The muscle felt as good as new, without even a hint of having been damaged earlier.

"Alright, let's get out of this place," Tabula Rasa said. "Valence, you got a good head on your shoulder. Remind me about this the next time I get cocky, kid."

"Of course," Valence nodded. "Although to be honest, getting caught in the web right as the mother spider was giving birth was simply astronomically bad luck."

Valence assumed the lead again and left Tabula Rasa and Horsey to walk along at their own pace.

"So Horsey, I bet you have a ton of questions!" She said, without a trace of her previous accent. "Lay 'em on me, I want to think about something other than spiders." She shuddered. "I can still taste the things."

Horsey took in a deep breath. "Alright, I'm just going to say it: What are you?"

Tabula Rasa cleared her throat. "Well… so you remember when I said that I was commissioned as a special agent for the Equestrian Federation? I didn't mean that I was granted a commision so much as I was created by commission as a token of good faith cooperation on behalf of my people. They figured that I could show the other Federation members the sincerity and utility of the Changeling Hive."

"So you're… an experiment?"

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose," Tabula Rasa drew herself to her full height and puffed out her chest. "I was modeled after the last Changeling Queen, who was quite powerful, if evil.."

Horsey frowned. "Hey, remember how we had that discussion about how I was enslaved as a horse?"

"Oh, you're not suggesting I'm a slave, are you?" Tabula Rasa laughed. "The Federation is a non-hierarchical egalitarian democratic republic! They wouldn't tolerate slavery. I could have turned down the job at any time, or retire today since I've long exceeded my original operational timeline. I just didn't want to because I had been raised my entire life with the idea that I should do my duty…"

She trailed off and groaned. "Oh no, I'm going to have another existential crisis about free will."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that!"

"It's fine! It's fine! All I need to do is remember my breathing exercises!" Tabula Rasa forced herself to breathe in slow and regular intervals.

"Um, if it makes you feel better, I think you have free will."

"But what do you mean by that?"

"Well, you make your own choices."

"Do I? Do I really? I make choices based off of the possibilities I see, which are determined by my upbringing as well as my experiences. I'm not making choices completely independent of my past, so I'm always subject to some level of constraints."

"That, uh, that's true," Horsey said. "But hey, that's true for everyone! So why would you worry about it?"

"Oh wow, that's a good point!" Tabula Rasa smiled in relief. "If I'm just like everyone else, then there's nothing worth worrying about!"

"I suppose not, though you aren't like anyone else I've ever met since you're a... " He trailed off as he searched for a proper term. "Bug horse?"

"Ah, that. Um… so I'm a Changeling, which is a shapeshifting creature that feeds off of the positive emotions of others. We used to do it in a deceptive, predatory fashion, but that was a long, long time ago."

"Because being friends with people and joining alliances is better for you?"

"Yes?" She laughed nervously. "Cooperation is an optimal survival strategy for social creatures, right?"

Horsey frowned. "Is that why we're friends?"

"Personal gain isn't part of my conscious decision making any more than it's part of yours." She said flatly.

"Sorry, that came out wrong. It's… it's been quite a day."

Tabula Rasa gave him a pat on the back with her wing. "Well, hopefully it'll be over soon and everything goes back to normal. We should be nearly there by now."

"I believe we're coming upon the gate now." Valence said from the front.

Horsey looked around at the vast emptiness surrounding them, which looked the same as it had at any other point in his journey. "I don't see anything."

"Oh, it's there. We just have to open it."

The beam of light from Valence's horn split into seven separate fragments, each one of which shot out into the void and connected with a different stat off in the distance. A pattern of lines began spreading between the stars and formed an intricate runic circle in front of them. The symbols on it glowed bright silver as a dazzling prismatic portal opened up in the middle.

"There we go," Valence said. "From here, we can execute a safe entry to the center of the exclusion zone. I suggest we enter cautiously and stay in close proximity to one another."

Horsey looked at the bright white light pouring out of the rune circle cautiously. "What's it like?"

"You have already been through a portal. This is no different. In fact, it will be better since this is a stable portal." Valence looked over at Tabula Rasa. "How would you like to proceed?"

"You and I take the lead. Horsey comes in after us escorted by Foxtrot and Morning Star."

Valence nodded. "Together, then."

Tabula Rasa gave Horsey a smack on the flank with her tail. "Remember: don't panic!"

She walked into the portal with Valence and they were whisked away in a stream of light.

"Our turn," Foxtrot said as he nudged Horsey forward.

Horsey took a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the portal. He felt himself pulled out off the path and hurled through it at a dizzying pace. After what felt like an eternity, he was unceremoniously dumped out of the exit in another dark void. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw Tabula Rasa and Valence staring off into the distance.

Far out in front of them was a white patch in the void as large as a mountain, through which he saw a planet with eleven moons circling around it. Every few seconds, the image would distort as various alternate realities vyed for dominance over each other until the system reached equilibrium.

"Etheria," Horsey whispered. Images flashed through his head; the armies of the Evil Horde pouring through Thaymor, flying through the air with his new wings in Bright Moon, and fixing a communications tower with Adora.

"Adora!" He shouted. "I know her name! My friend is Adora, She-Ra of Etheria! And I am her loyal bonded steed Swift Wind!"

The others stared at him.

"That's Etheria?" Foxtrot said. "That planet's supposed to be gone!"

Swift Wind closed his eyes. "Mara! The last She-Ra hid Etheria away in the pocket dimension of Despondos!"

"And a good thing she did, that planet's a menace," Morning Star snorted. "Who's tryin' to break it out of Despondos?"

He saw a banner fluttering in the wind over a decimated battlefield. "The Horde. They took Adora's sword and used it to open a portal."

"Those reprobates?" Valence groaned. "That is bad. That is very bad. They are going to trigger a resonance cascade!"

"How?"

"Someone twisted the fabric of space-time and tied it into a knot to seal off Etheria. Opening a portal is like cutting it open from the inside. Give me some time to scan it and I'll pinpoint the epicenter of the wormhole so we can shut it down."

Tabula Rasa gestured upwards. "We might have bigger problems than that."

On the upper edge of the white patch, looking out at them from the inside, was an enormous purple caterpillar like creature slowly crawling around the edge of the rift. Its saliva distorted the fabric of space-time as it nibbled away at the disturbance, while its spun new fabric in its wake that slowly closed up the rift.

"What in Eternia's name is that?" Swift Wind gasped.

Valence furrowed his brow. "Right, that. That it is a Paradox Eater, a species that evolved in this metaphysical plane who maintain the fabric of reality to ensure they have a stable environment to live in. You can see it there eating damaged fabric and weave a replacement."

"That sounds good?"

"Well, your home and all your friends will be erased if it does. So in addition to the possibility of reality tearing itself apart, there's the chance that it fixes itself in a manner that eliminates your home."

"So should we attack the bug?" Swift Wind asked. "It doesn't look so tough to me. What is it, the size of a whale? We could take it."

Valence shook his head. "It's a whale with reality dissolving acid and heaven knows what else. It would not be a trivial task, Swift Wind."

Tabula Rasa stepped forward. "Valence, what is your recommendation?"

"Hm." Valence tapped on the ground thoughtfully. "Eliminate the disturbance and cause the Paradox Eater to lose interest. But there is quite a lot of interference due to how large the disturbance is and we might run out of time before I pinpoint the epicenter. If the Paradox Eater finishes its work before the resonance cascade triggers, then Swift Wind's home is gone but Equestria is still safe. If both us and the Paradox Eater are too slow, then reality is destroyed."

Swift Wind felt his heart jump into his throat. "You're not going to let my friends die, are you? I know they don't mean anything to you, but they're everything to me!"

"They wouldn't be dead, they'll never have existed in the first place," Tabula Rasa said. "And no, we're not going to let that happen. I say we distract the Paradox Eater and teleport in the moment Valence gets coordinates."

Valence nodded. "Understood. I wish you the best of luck."

Swift Wind extended his wings. "How are we going to do this?"

"Well, it's pretty far off into the void, so it's going to be fliers only." She flashed Foxtrot an apologetic smile. "Sorry Captain, you're going to have to sit this one out."

Foxtrot shrugged. "You can make it up to me by not getting wiped out of existence."

"If I do, you'll never know it!"

Morning Star coughed pointedly. "Excuse me, but we're not really taking Swift Wind along, are we? He'll throw us off."

"Excuse me?" Swift Wind bristled. "I'm not going to stay here while my friend is in danger!"

Tabula Rasa shook her head. "He's right, you know. Don't take this the wrong way, but this is out of your league."

"You know," Valence said. "You might be of use another way. You said that you were bonded to her, correct? What kind of bond is it?"

"An empathic one. Why?"

"Well, if they took your friend's sword, your friend would likely try to get it back, correct?"

Swift Wind nodded. "Adora has a special connection to the sword. It chose her to be She-Ra!"

"Would then be reasonable to assume that she is trying to recover it?"

"I don't think anything could stop her."

"Then I propose that we focus on your empathic bond to figure out where Adora is since she will be in close proximity to the sword."

"Have you ever done anything like it before?"

"Me? No. Not my branch of magic." He looked over at Tabula Rasa. "Tabula, meanwhile…"

"Oooh yes! I'm an empath! I can totally help you!" She was giddy with excitement. "So you're going to be our antenna, I'll be a signal booster, and Valence can take readings through us!"

"Alright," said Morning Star. "So I'm going to distract that thing by myself?"

"Please and thank you!" She said. "Are you going to go all in?"

He stretched out his wings and pushed off of the ground. "Nah, I think I'll just buzz it a little."

The hairs in Swift Wind's mane stood up as a cackling wreath of electricity enveloped Morning Star. The pegasus gave a resounding roar and shot off like a rocket. The aura around him grew steadily more intense until he resembled a meteor.

He collided with the side of the Paradox Eater and knocked it off balance with a blinding electrical discharge. As it fell, the Paradox Eater gave an unsettling wail and spat acid at Morning Star, who deftly wove through the air and slammed into it yet again.

"Alright, looks like he's doing fine." Tabula Rasa touched her horn to Swift Wind's. "Ready?"

Swift Wind nodded. "Yeah."

Tabula Rasa locked her gaze onto him and the last thing he saw was her eyes flashing bright green.

* * *

The sky was choked with foul smoke when he opened his eyes. He was on a high tower in the Fright Zone. Adora had told him stories about growing up here, but she had never managed to convey how bad it was. This place was a blight on Etheria.

The building trembled and bright beams of light shot out of the cracks that formed in the ground. Entire buildings glowed and phased out of existence. This reality was destabilizing. He had to find Adora.

Swift Wind stretched out his wings and took off into the sky. He could feel her presence somewhere below him as the world collapsed. She was afraid and running for her life.

There! He saw her grab hold of Lonnie and run towards a bunker.

"Adora!" He shouted. "Adora, hold on! I'm coming for you!"

He dived towards them, but the blast doors sealed shut right before he could enter. Then the bright light overtook him.

The scenery shifted, and he was in the skies above Bright Moon. Swift Wind watched in horror as his home fell to pieces around him. He caught a glimpse through a palace window of Adora running with Bow and Glimmer in tow, but the entire palace disappeared before he could reach them.

Now he was among the mountains of Dryl, as lightning streaked across the sky. Swift Wind charged into the castle and darted through its labyrinth. He could sense Adora was in Entrapta's laboratory, but there was no clear path to it.

Reality changed every time he thought he was drawing near. Each time it happened faster, and more abruptly. He closed his eyes and wept as the world dissolved into a dizzying array of images and scenes.

"Please, I just want to find my friend," he whispered. "Why can't I find her?"

He opened his eyes to see that he was among a sea of floating stones, beneath a swirling vortex centered around the Sword of Protection. Far out in front of him, he could see Queen Angela talking to Adora. Swift Wind prayed that reality would hold long enough for him to reach them as he closed in on them. A mile away from the disturbance, he saw Angela bid Adora farewell and fly up to reach the sword. She cast it out of the vortex and it collapsed, swallowing her as it disappeared.

And then the world vanished yet again.

* * *

Swift Wind found himself staring into Tabula Rasa's green eyes as she shook him.

"Swift Wind, what happened?" she asked. "The wormhole collapsed!"

He looked around to see that the tear in the fabric of reality was gone now replaced by the darkness of space. "They fixed it! They managed to shut it down!"

"Alright! The problem done solved itself," Foxtrot cheered. "My favorite kind of resolution!"

"If only it didn't require me to nearly get erased from existence," Morning Star grumbled. "Are we done here?"

Swift Wind shook his head. "No, I think we still have a problem. I saw Queen Angela go into the disturbance and I don't think she made it out."

"Quite possible," Valence nodded. "Wormholes are a tricky business. But if she did get trapped, we can find her. I still have the coordinates of her last location: if we get there fast enough, she'll still be in the area."

"Then make it so!" Tabula Rasa said.

Valence closed his eyes and traced a runic circle in the air with his horn. "You go in and I'll hold the portal open from this side."

"Come on, Swift Wind! Into the breach!" Tabula Rasa raced through the portal without a second thought.

Swift Wind took in a deep breath and followed her. The dazzling bright portal strained his body, but he was used to it now. He gritted his teeth as the portal dumped him into a white void right behind Tabula Rasa.

"Alright, looks like we're here!" she said. "This is the Aether, as the ancient poets called it, or null-space if you want to be a little more technical."

"And Queen Angela should be here?"

"Well, I don't see her, but time, distance, perception, and so forth work really oddly here. Stay close and we'll search together."

"I'm sorry I can't be more helpful," he sighed. "I only have a bond with Adora because she's She-Ra."

As he said the name, something in his mind clicked and he locked eyes with Tabula Rasa. "Wait. Tabula, would anyone who shut down a wormhole that way get stuck here in the Aether?"

"Probably, unless they had the means to escape. What are you thinking?"

"This all happened before. Adora found the Sword of Protection in the Whispering Woods, because a thousand years ago Mara stranded Etheria into Despondos. But we never found out what happened to her, just old images and recordings."

"You think she might be trapped here too?"

Swift Wind closed his eyes and focused his mind on the Sword of Protection and She-Ra. His memories of Adora were at the forefront of his mind, but diving deeper he could feel something inside him. Something that he had never felt before in Etheria. An image of a strong warrior woman determined to do what was right for the universe, even at the cost of her own life. A woman who would forge her own path in life and defy fate itself.

"Yes I think she's here," he said.

"Then we'll rescue her too." Tabula Rasa touched her horn to his solemnly. "I promise you we're not going to stop until everything's right again."


End file.
